Privacy Policy

1. Introduction

As part of our mission to help make commerce better for everyone, Protect Software GmbH and its affiliates (collectively, “Protect”) collect and process a lot of information. This Privacy Policy is intended to help you better understand how we collect, use and store your personal information—whether you are a merchant or end user that uses Protect’s products, applications or services (together, the “Services”), a customer that shops at our store, a participant in Protect’s “Partners” program, or whether you’re simply visiting this website. By using any of Protect’s Services, or by dealing with a merchant using Protect’s Services, you are agreeing to the terms of this Privacy Policy and, as applicable, the Protect Terms of Service.

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time in order to reflect, for example, changes to our privacy practices or for other operational, legal, or regulatory reasons. If we make material changes to this Privacy Policy, we will give you notice of such changes by posting the revised policy on this Website, and where appropriate, by other means. By continuing to use this Website or the Support Service after these changes are posted, you agree to the revised policy.

2. Information from customers

What information do we collect from customers and why?

We collect customers’ name, email, shipping and billing address, payment details, company name, phone number, IP address, information about orders you initiate, information about stores that you visit, and information about the device and browser you use.

We use this information to provide Services, including supporting and processing orders, risk and fraud screening, authentication, and payments. We also use this information to improve our Services.

We use some of the personal information you provide us to conduct some level of automated decision-making -- for example, we use certain personal information (for example, ip addresses or payment information) to automatically block certain potentially fraudulent transactions for a short period of time.

When do we collect this information?

We collect this information when you use or access a store that uses our Services, such as when you visit our online shop, place an order or sign up for an account.

Additionally, we partner with third parties who provide us information about our merchants’ customers, for example to help us screen out merchants associated with fraud.

When and why do we share this information with third parties?

Protect works with a variety of third parties and service providers to help provide our merchants with the Services and we may share personal information with them to support these efforts.

We may also share your information in the following circumstances:

to prevent, investigate, or take action regarding illegal activities, suspected fraud, situations involving potential threats to the physical safety of any person, violations of our Terms of Service or any other agreement related to the Services, or as otherwise required by law.

If the merchant whose store you visit or access directs us to transfer this information (for example, if they enable a third party app that accesses customer personal information).

to conform to legal requirements, or to respond to lawful court orders, subpoenas, warrants, or other requests by public authorities (including to meet national security or law enforcement requirements).

Personal information may also be shared with a company that acquires our business or the business of a merchant whose store you visit or access, whether through merger, acquisition, bankruptcy, dissolution, reorganization, or other similar transaction or proceeding.

Protect is responsible for all onward transfers of personal information to third parties in accordance with the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield Framework, the Swiss-U.S. Privacy Shield Framework, and Canada’s Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA).

3. Information from partners

Partners are individuals or businesses that have agreed to the terms of the Protect Partner Program to work with Protect to promote the Services by (a) referring clients to Protect; (b)developing Protect store themes for merchant use; or (c) developing apps using the Protect Application Interface (API) for merchant use.

What information do we collect from partners and why?

We use this information to work with you, confirm your identity, contact you, pay you and to screen for risk, fraud, or other similar types of issues.

We collect data about the Protect websites that you visit. We also collect data about how and when you access your account and the Protect platform, including information about the device and browser you use, your network connection, your IP address, and information about how you browse through the Protect interface.

We use this information to give you access to and improve our Services; for example, to make our platform interface easier to use. We also use this information to personalize the Services for you; for example, by shifting the order of apps in the Protect app store to show you apps we believe may be of interest to you.

We collect personal information about your customers that you share with us or that they provide to us directly.

We use this information to work with you and to provide our Services to your customers.

We will also use personal information in other cases where you have given us express permission.

When do we collect this information?

We collect this information when you sign up for a partner account, when you sign up one of your customers for our Services, or when your customers sign up themselves. We also collect any additional information that you might provide to us.

When and why do we share this information with third parties?

Protect works with a variety of third parties and service providers to help provide you with our Services and we may share personal information with them to support these efforts.

We may also share your information in the following circumstances:

to prevent, investigate, or take action regarding illegal activities, suspected fraud, situations involving potential threats to the physical safety of any person, violations of our Terms of Service or any other agreement related to the Services, or as otherwise required by law.

to help us conduct marketing and/or advertising campaigns.

to conform to legal requirements, or to respond to lawful court orders, subpoenas, warrants, or other requests by public authorities (including to meet national security or law enforcement requirements).

Personal information may also be shared with a company that acquires our business, whether through merger, acquisition, bankruptcy, dissolution, reorganization, or other similar transaction or proceeding. If this happens, we will post a notice on our home page.

Protect will always ask for your consent before sharing your personal information with third parties for purposes other than those described in this Section 7.

Protect is responsible for all onward transfers of personal information to third parties in accordance with the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield Framework, the Swiss-U.S. Privacy Shield Framework, and Canada’s Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA).

4. Information from Protect website visitors and support users

What information do we collect and why?

As you visit or browse the Flicrkocket websites, we collect information about the device and browser you use, your network connection, your IP address, and information about the cookies installed on your device. We also collect personal information submitted by you via any messaging feature available from any of our websites (“Messaging Feature”).

We may also receive personal information when you purchase tickets or make other requests to Protect via any of our websites.

From telephone support users, we collect your phone number, call audio, and other personal information you provide us during our call. Pursuant to our Terms of Service, we may request additional documentation from you during our call to verify your identity.

From chat support users, we collect your name, email address, information about the device and browser you use, your network connection, your IP address, chat transcript, and other personal information you provide us during our chat. Pursuant to our Terms of Service, we may request additional documentation from you during our chat to verify your identity.

From forum users, we collect your name, email address, website URL, and other personal information you may post.

We use this information to verify your account, to provide and enhance our Services (including supporting or servicing your account, if applicable), and answer any questions you may have.

When do we collect this information?

We collect this information when you visit the Protect websites, use Services offered on our websites or engage with us either by email, web form, instant message, phone, or post content on or through our websites (including forums, blogs and via any Messaging Feature). We also collect any additional information that you might provide to us.

5. Information from cookies and similar tracking technologies

What is a cookie? A cookie is a small amount of data, which may include a unique identifier. Cookies are sent to your browser from a website and stored on your device. We assign a different cookie to each device that accesses our website.

Why does Protect use cookies and similar tracking technology?

We use cookies to recognize your device and provide you with a personalized experience on our websites, or otherwise through the Services. We also use cookies as part of the Services, for example to operate the shopping cart for our merchants’ stores. Read more about how we use cookies on our sites and our merchants’ sites in our Cookie Policy.

We also use cookies to serve targeted ads from Google, Facebook, Bing, and other third-party vendors.

Opting out: You can opt out of targeted ads served via specific third party vendors by visiting the Digital Advertising Alliance’s Opt-Out page.

We may also use web beacons, software development kids, and other automated tracking methods on our websites, in communications with you, and in our products and services, to measure performance and engagement.

Please note that because there is no consistent industry understanding of how to respond to “Do Not Track” signals, we do not alter our data collection and usage practices when we detect such a signal from your browser.

6. For how long do we retain your personal information?

In general, we keep your personal information throughout your relationship with us. For merchants, this means we will keep your information as long as you maintain a store on your platform. For partners, this means we will keep your information until you inform us that you wish to terminate your partner relationship with us. For our merchants’ customers, we process your information solely as a data processor on behalf of our merchants, and it is up to the merchant to determine how long they will store your information in our systems.

Once you terminate your relationship with us, we generally will continue to store archived copies of your personal information for legitimate business purposes and to comply with the law, except when we receive a valid erasure request, or, if you are a merchant, you terminate your account and your personal information is purged pursuant to our standard purge process.

If you opt to have Protect operate your store, we keep your information as long as the store remains active. If you would like us to delete all of your personal information stored in connection with that account, please use the “Delete data” option in the Protect admin interface.

We will continue to store anonymous or anonymized information, such as website visits, without identifiers, in order to improve our Services.

7. What we don’t do with your personal information

We do not and will never share, disclose, sell, rent, or otherwise provide personal information to other companies (other than to specific Protect merchants you are interacting with, or to third party apps or service providers being used by the merchants you are interacting with) for the marketing of their own products or services.

If you are a merchant using Protect’s Services, we do not use the personal information we collect from you or your customers to independently contact or market to your customers. However, Protect may contact or market to your customers if we obtain their information from another source, such as from the customers themselves (for example, if they use a different Protect consumer-facing service).

We perform annual audits to ensure our handling of your credit card information aligns with industry guidelines. We are certified as a PCI DSS compliant service provider.

No method of transmission over the Internet, or method of electronic storage, is 100% secure. Therefore, we cannot guarantee the absolute security of your personal information.

9. Residents of the European Economic Area (“EEA”)

Protect works with merchants and users around the world, including in the EEA. As part of our service, we may transfer your personal information to other regions, including the United States. In order to ensure that your information is protected when transferred out of the EEA, Protect relies on the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield (described in more detail below), as well as inter-company agreements between our various affiliates that may process your information on behalf of Protect.

If you are located in the EEA, you have certain rights under European law with respect to your personal data, including the right to request access to, correct, amend, delete, port to another service provider, or object to certain uses of your personal data. If you are a merchant, a partner, a visitor of Protect’s websites, or a user of Protect’s support services and wish to exercise these rights, please reach out to us using the contact information below. If you are a customer of a merchant who uses Protect’s platform and wish to exercise these rights, please contact the merchants you interacted with directly -- we serve as a processor on their behalf, and can only forward your request to them to allow them to respond.

Additionally, if you are located in the EEA, we note that we are generally processing your information in order to fulfill contracts we might have with you (for example if you make an order through the Site), or otherwise to pursue our legitimate business interests listed above, unless we are required by law to obtain your consent for a particular processing operation. In particular we process your personal data to pursue the following legitimate interests, either for ourselves, our merchants, our partners, or other third parties (including our merchants’ customers):

To provide merchants and others with our services and applications;

To prevent risk and fraud on our platform;

To provide communications, marketing, and advertising;

To provide reporting and analytics;

To help merchants find and integrate with apps through our app store;

To provide troubleshooting, support services, or to answer questions;

To test out features or additional services; and

To improve our services, applications, and websites.

When we process personal information to pursue these legitimate interests, we do so where we believe the nature of the processing, the information being processed, and the technical and organisational measures employed to protect that information can help mitigate the risks to the data subject.

10. How do we protect your personal information across borders?

While Protect is a German company, we provide services to individuals and our technology processes data from users around the world. Accordingly, Protect may transmit your personal information outside of the country, state, or province in which you are located.

11. Control over and access to your personal information

In the course of offering our services, Protect uses a number of machine learning algorithms and forms of automated decision-making. For example, we use automated decision-making: to prevent risk and fraud by merchants; to help merchants avoid fraudulent transactions from their customers; to personalize merchants’ experience when they use our admin and app store; and to determine eligibility for certain services.

Most of these algorithms (excluding the personalization features and a subset of customer risk/fraud screening, discussed in more detail below) are not fully automated and include some human intervention (for example, customer risk and fraud scores are provided to merchants, who must intentionally decide how to act on them). Our personalization algorithms are fully automated, but only affect display features like how apps in the app store are presented to you. Similarly, we have a small subset of fully automated fraud screening blacklists, which, if we believe a transaction was made using stolen or fraudulent payment information, may stop a customer from completing a transaction--but only for a period of between a few hours and a few days.

12. Control over and access to your personal information

Protect understands that you have rights over your personal information, and takes reasonable steps to allow you to access, correct, amend, delete, port, or limit the use of your personal information. If you are a merchant or a partner, you can update many types of personal information, such as payment or contact information, directly within your account settings. If you are unable to change your personal information within your account settings, or if you are concerned about data collected as you visit Protect’s websites or use our support services, please contact us to make the required changes. If you are a merchant’s customer and wish to exercise these rights, please contact the merchants you interacted with directly -- we serve as a processor on their behalf, and can only forward your request to them to allow them to respond. It’s important to remember that if you delete or limit the use of your personal information, the Services may not function properly. Additionally, if you would like to have your personal information erased, please use "Delete Account" feature of the shop's "My Content" section.

If you have any questions about your personal information or this policy, or if you would like to make a complaint about how Protect processes your personal data, please contact Protect by email at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or by using the contact details below:

About Us

Protect Software develops leading copy protection and license control solutions for software, video and virtually any other content. Since 1996 we effectively and reliably secure the valuable properties of our large and small clients. We are an experienced and passionate team with offices in the United States, Germany and the United Kingdom.